Top positive review

I just had AT&T Gigapower service installed. After 2 weeks, a storm hit my area, and the AT&T router was fried. Along with it also knocked out 2 of my managed 24 port Gigabit switches connected to the router. AT&T came over and replaced the router, but refused to accept responsibility for the damages to my network equipment. I looked at the crappy job AT&T did, and found out that they DID NOT ground the cable coming into the house. They also DID NOT even have a 3 prong power supply on their ONT device in my garage. The repair guy told me that they go out and replace the damaged routers after every storm, because of the cheap installation equipment. I am still having a dispute with AT&T over their poor installation ability.In the main time, I do not want another storm to knock out my network again, so I need a good surge protector for this "unprotected" network.I tried many RJ45 type of network surge protectors. Most of them are only rated for CAT5 connections, and would not be able to connect anything above 100Mbit network. I saw this product, and decided to give it a try.Other cheap pass through devices would not even register the connection properly. This neat little gadget was able to register gigabit connection right away! I made a grounding wire out of an old computer power cord, and plugged into a 5000j surge protector.I tested network speed at speedtest website. Upload speed at 915-950 Mbit, and download speed at about the same range.For reliable gigabit ethernet surge protection, this is the real deal. It is unfortunate that consumer has to go out of the way to fix the inadequate installation of a big network giant like AT&T. I feel sorry for average user who are not electronically inclined, and had to deal with the consequences of a bucks of cost cutting.If you have "unprotected" installation from AT&T, you should get this and avoid hundreds of hours of frustration going through their support and claim process. That is a story for another time...See attached photos of before and after my installation to fix what AT&T refused to address.Have a question? Just ask me, and I will answer to the best of my knowledge.

Top critical review

Product has a design flaw in the copper weight / trace size that carries the signal from the connector pins to the gas tube. Lost that $700 board now because the traces on the printed wire board opened up, and allowed the surge to pass through. See photos.

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I just had AT&T Gigapower service installed. After 2 weeks, a storm hit my area, and the AT&T router was fried. Along with it also knocked out 2 of my managed 24 port Gigabit switches connected to the router. AT&T came over and replaced the router, but refused to accept responsibility for the damages to my network equipment. I looked at the crappy job AT&T did, and found out that they DID NOT ground the cable coming into the house. They also DID NOT even have a 3 prong power supply on their ONT device in my garage. The repair guy told me that they go out and replace the damaged routers after every storm, because of the cheap installation equipment. I am still having a dispute with AT&T over their poor installation ability.In the main time, I do not want another storm to knock out my network again, so I need a good surge protector for this "unprotected" network.I tried many RJ45 type of network surge protectors. Most of them are only rated for CAT5 connections, and would not be able to connect anything above 100Mbit network. I saw this product, and decided to give it a try.Other cheap pass through devices would not even register the connection properly. This neat little gadget was able to register gigabit connection right away! I made a grounding wire out of an old computer power cord, and plugged into a 5000j surge protector.I tested network speed at speedtest website. Upload speed at 915-950 Mbit, and download speed at about the same range.For reliable gigabit ethernet surge protection, this is the real deal. It is unfortunate that consumer has to go out of the way to fix the inadequate installation of a big network giant like AT&T. I feel sorry for average user who are not electronically inclined, and had to deal with the consequences of a bucks of cost cutting.If you have "unprotected" installation from AT&T, you should get this and avoid hundreds of hours of frustration going through their support and claim process. That is a story for another time...See attached photos of before and after my installation to fix what AT&T refused to address.Have a question? Just ask me, and I will answer to the best of my knowledge.

TL:DR - I've had this unit for 1 and 1/2 years now. A few weeks ago we had 5 days of continuous bad thunderstorms. I'm not talking about just rain showers, I mean bad lightning for 5 days every afternoon. It was miserable. Many fires in our county because of these storms.So how did these hold up?

I have four in-line Tupavco protectors starting at the outside of my house to protect all downstream network connections before they enter my main house and ultimately into my core networking cabinet.

The first and second Tupavco is on my guest cottage about 5 yards away from the first protector. It sits in-line for the ethernet entering into the guest cottage and a second protector for the main "backbone" ethernet extending down to my workshop, barn, and gym before feeding back into the core networking cabinet. The third and fourth Tupavco is at the base of my grain silo protecting my network from a weather IP camera mounted 33 feet up on my grain silo and the protecting an aerial (overhead) ethernet cable extending to my gym also protecting my network from the switch that is at the gym.

Remember that lightning? At some point lightning struck my fields near my silo (and maybe the silo itself) enough that the UNPROTECTED ends of my network at the gym switch and the actual camera itself were fried. Like deep fried. The networking switch smelled like burnt silicone and the camera did as well. These two devices were UNPROTECTED and I didn't have any Tupavco protection on those ends. The Tupavcos at the base of the grain silo grounded whatever electrical current hit my switch and camera and protected the core network from any transient voltages. WORKED AS ADVERTISED! I lost about $100 in electronics (switch and IP camera) but over $2,000 in core networking gear (switches, servers, routers, access points, etc.) was protected.

I replaced my IP camera and gym network switch and bought two more of these Tupavco protectors to protect my new gym switch and new IP camera.

Original review:Well it's hard to review this because I won't know how well made it is until struck by lightning or some other surge.

Beyond reviewing the actual functionality:The unit is gray in color as opposed to beige in the picture. I think it looks better being gray.The unit is built with a sturdy plastic housing (not thin, cheap plastic).The bottom includes a moisture-resistant cable pass through (which should keep the bugs out too).

I have another communications project I am working on and will be purchasing two more in the near future.

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It seems to work just as well as the one originally provided by my internet provider. Maybe even better. The original one is designed with varistors, which can overheat and explode during lightning attacks. This one is designed with spark gap tubes, which are less likely to explode. Varistors have other advantages, and spark tubes have other disadvantages, but for this application, I like spark tubes better.

Several lightning storms later, it is still going strong, which I cannot say for the last varistor version. But then, the effects of lightning are rather unpredictable, so it may just be random chance.

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The unit appears to be well made and I was able to install it without issue. It looks nice, is sturdy, and I hope I don’t have to have it tested by a lightning strike! But, I believe it will work based on how the unit is constructed and how I’ve installed it. This item is significantly less expensive then other professional units that electricians typically use.

Why I can’t give 5 stars:There are no installation instructions that ship with the item, so make sure to watch the video here on Amazon and read the comments and question/answers section. The description of the unit also does not say the gauge of ground wire you need, but I was able to find out asking a question here on Amazon. It’s gauge #10 if you are interested to know, and I purchased the ground wire here on Amazon as well as a separate item.

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The one I received is either defective or does not function as described. I cannot return the item because I failed to keep the original packang (clearly my mistake) but some of the time it will not even register a signal between two NIC destinations (green LAN lights at the termination points) or when it does it only shows 100Mb not Gigabit (orange instead of green). I know that it isnt the cabling as the problem because i use it on both my server and HTPC and both transfer with the same cables at gigabit and show green instead of orange. when it was working (it isnt now), it was limiting my bandwidth well below gigabit for internal lan to lan file xfers. my situation may only be isolated to a bad unit but regardless i would not recommend this product.

Edit: This retailer just issued me a refund because he believed I may have received an unusually faulty item. I respect that and will now change my rating. Thanks for being an honest seller.

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What I thought to be an issue with the device was actually a problem with the patch cables. I had to order a network cable tester to figure that out. The culprit cables are repaired now and the device functions as it should.

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It does great at what it is ment to do. However, i dont believe that it will throughput gigabit. My gigabit switch believes it is connected to a 100 megabit source. The source is from my gigabit router and this is the only break in that connection. I will try a different gigabit surge solution and report back

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We are using it to protect a cable run between two buildings. It installs nicely and clean. So far we have no incidents to report. The run is a long one and these units didn't slow the speed. We did tests before and after installing.